“Three generations have passed since King Hinton I ascended to the throne, fresh from his brutal campaign against his half brother and triumphant return down the Kings’ Road. King Hinton II, son of King Albert IV now sits upon the Autumn Throne in Arantal, his courtiers and clerics whispering foul poison in his ears and bending this weak-willed cumberworld to their own, selfish desires…”

Brandon sat, seething. The three adventurers sat across from him, their brigandine ancient and decrepit, their steel helms either too small or too large for their young heads. Not one of them looked old enough to bother a maid, never mind wield the spears and axes they carried. Hell, one of them looked a maid, not that it’d be the first time he’d seen a young lass flee the beating of her father or husband for a life of coin and violence. He looked them over one last time, his eyes lingering on the smallest figure with the hooded face. He could guess that one’s past, but knew better than to ask this close to Terracrios…

“Listen. History is all well and good, but all you need know is that a man with documents and supplies destined for the Northman’s cause leaves early on the morrow. I need fit and able escorts for this cart, and you three are all I have to hand. We expect no trouble, but the Kings’ Road is never a safe place this far north. It’s three days travel to Northtower. Two nights you’ll send camped on the road, one night you’ll likely be whoring your way through Low Briar’s wenches. Half payment now, half on arrival. How does that sound to you?”

Brandon knew the answer before he even finished the question. Still, even with these three ‘adventurers’ standing guard, he prayed to almighty Barachiel and all his angels that the Kings’ Road would be safe. He laughed mirthlessly. That would never be the case in the Northwild…

How Will You Make Your Mark?

Talomire is a low fantasy setting designed for use in any RPG system. It is a world where magic is outlawed, dangerous and secretive. It is a world where Kings command with an iron fist, while nobles and bishops rule from the shadows. It is a world of danger, intrigue and opportunity, where bold adventurers can seek fame and, more commonly, fortune. Seen as threats, as much as they are defenders or saviours, the adventuring parties of Talomire work for themselves, their loyalty only lasting as long as the coin does. Some fight for more philanthropic reasons, but they are rare and last only a short time. Infamy is all that awaits those with careers worth speaking of, those careers that don’t end at the hands of some terrible creature, in a long forgotten crypt…

Getting Involved.

Talomire may be my own creation, but it is ours to build. If travelling the dirt roads of the Northwilds sounds exciting; if walking the fertile plains and hills of the Terracrios stirs the soul; if the politicking of Arantal, or the fugitive-seeking patrols of The Spine set your imagination ablaze, then take my world and make it your own. Tell your stories, build your towns, rule your Baronies, or delve into the secrets of Talomire’s ancient past. Build the world with your fellow players and storytellers.

Learn More.

At present, Talomire is represented solely in the Talomire Campaign Primer, available for free on DriveThruRPG (click HERE to head there now), with the Talomire podcast expanding on the elements in that document in-game. This podcast is available on Apple iTunes (linked just above), as well as Google Play, Anchor.fm, and YouTube.

Over the next year, and hopefully longer, I aim to release more detailed sourcebooks for those of you who want to know more about the culture, geography and history, as well as ‘canonocal’ adventures set in Talomire. The first of these adventures “The Barrows of Northwild” is already well underway, and should be out soon. On top of this, the Campaign Primer is an ever-evolving document, with the information, art and background I feel gives DMs and players the best insight into my view of Talomire.

Please, Feedback!

I love to hear back from you guys. A recent survey I sent around to my customers directly led to two things; 1) development of a History of Talomire, from the point of view of someone in the world, called “The Death of Magic”. This is designed to be used by both players and DMs to help bring everybody into the same, shared, universe, as well as giving them a springboard for their own creativity. 2) I am currently working on splitting the Campaign Primer into a DMs document and a Players’ document. This will allow me to give players more thematic, in-world information and maps, not all of which will be entirely accurate, while giving DMs unfiltered access into Talomire’s ancient past, the dangers lurking in the unknown parts of the world, as maps with locations no man or woman has ever seen…or at least survived to tell of…

If you want to be a part of this, then please email me at sundaynightDM@gmail.com, or follow me on Instagram (@chris_hately), Twitter (@SundayNightDM), or Facebook, and tell me all about your character’s exploits, the town they were born and raised in, and the people and creatures they’ve met.

Last Words.

Thank you. Whether you spent a fiver on the Campaign Primer, got it for free, or haven’t even checked it out yet, the very fact that you’ve read this far means the world to me. Having people respect my content, often enough to call me out on what I can be doing better, is what makes this all worth doing, and I truly hope it continues. So thank you, and I hope to meet you in the taverns of Northtower…hopefully before the Kaimel Aioki returns from ancient slumber…

Real talk. I have done many things as a dungeon master that I am incredibly proud of. From being the person who introduced D&D to everyone in their group (including the DM!), to organising (allegedly) the largest gaming group in the Newcastle area, to running a fantastic game with 15 players in what is (I think) the largest game of ICRPG ever played. The whole of Talomire, the growth of my cartography, helping my wife run her first D&D game, playing online with Hankerin Ferinale, and I could go on and on. But, my question to you, which of these things do you think I reflect on the most?

Answer: My complete failure to convert on Patreon.

……

So…what happened?

Patreon is a strange animal. It seems to be a platform that creators direct their audiences to as a form of third party income. It seemed to me that Patreon would pretty much look after itself, that as long as I continued to put out content then it would be fine. In reality this isn’t true. Patreon is a social experience, one that needs to be run as intimately as an Instagram account, or a Facebook group.

In time, and after simply forgetting to post anything to my Patreon, I had dropped from $30 a month to $3. I had ignored the people paying me to hone my craft, and they had responded by leaving. To those people, I really am sorry.

So, why am I bringing this up on a D&D blog? Well, I think it’s important to own your mistakes, and be honest about them. By putting these failures into words I feel it gives us a chance to own them and learn from them. That’s my hope, anyway.

That’s about all, really. My time in Patreon has taught me a lot, and I’m in the process of adapting it to fit how I work. It’s been a catastrophic failure, but it’s one I think I can rise from. So maybe that’s it; success is just failing till you don’t fail.

It’s late, and I’ve been staring at a screen for almost fourteen hours at this point. I’m gonna go to bed.

In my time running D&D games, there is one constant that has plagued me – bad prep notes. Try as I might, getting all the information I need into a form that leaves me able to accurately run the game I planned has eluded me, leading to one of two outcomes; a game where I feel strangled by my notes, or an entirely improvised game that is fun to play, but overly complex to build over multiple sessions.

Here, I’m hoping to spend some time critiquing my various prep methods. I hope this is useful to you (and myself), planning games in future. Also, please let me know if you prepare your notes differently. I’d love to learn from you guys too!

The DM Folder.

Of all the methods I’ve used, this is by far my favourite, but by the far most unwieldy. In the Sunday Night games I ran (after which this blog is named), I had a lever arch folder split into various sections. These ranged from a section devoted to the city of Waterdeep (maps, charts for shops, detailed descriptions of areas of interest, etc), a section devoted to NPCs (name scratch sheets, stat blocks for NPCs the characters had met, or could meet), and a section devoted entirely to pre-built adventures and spare maps.

This method was wonderful for a number of reasons. I had everything at my fingertips, all in bullet pointed format and easy to rattle off. I could make notes to my heart’s content and print off additional material when I needed. Flicking to the place I needed was made easy by good sectioning, and good labelling. The method’s huge downfall is the sheer amount of space it takes up. Before even beginning to worry about DM screens, dice trays, handouts, minis, 3d terrain and maps, and the rest of those things that we DMs love to use, the majority of our gaming table was dominated by my folder, even on a 6’x4′ table.

This method is something I use outside of the game now. My Talomire setting is wrapped up entirely in one folder, giving me all the resources I need to build adventures and plan nights of gameplay. It’s not something I can use at the table anymore, unfortunately.

The DM Journal

This single item is responsible for the vast majority of my RPG related creativity over the last few months. Constantly carrying a journal that is dedicated to maps, concepts, mechanics and lore means that so much of what would once have been lost to the aether has instead been codified and kept. The rampant creativity, the ability to riff on ideas over time, the ability to come back to ideas and maps down the line; these are all invaluable, and I recommend it unreservedly.

When it comes to running games from a journal you gain a lot of the advantages of a DM folder, but without the ability to properly organise it. It also requires you to be disciplined in your creativity, writing what needs to be written in order. With the way my mind works, this makes it difficult to run anything beyond a one-shot from my journal. Truthfully, this is entirely down to my own lack of discipline. My second journal, I’m hoping, will be much more organised, but I’m not really too hopeful.

My Notebook

With my latest campaign I decided to try and combine the two methods I’ve tried before. I bought a ringbound notebook and took notes on the published adventure I was running. Edge of Darkness is a free Dark Heresy adventure, designed in the Warhammer 40,000 setting. I took bullet point notes on each of the areas, cutting out the descriptive elements from the adventure and highlighting all the elements of that section that I felt were needed. My issue with published adventures has always been making them my own. Reading from the book I feel I need to keep to their vision, and as a result I stop improvising and creating. With this adventure I felt I was able to tear out the things I needed, shave off the parts I felt were surplus, and really make the adventure my own.

The problems I found were mainly due to my failings as a DM, rather than the method. I found myself reading the descriptive text, rather than using it as a guide. As such my descriptions were two-dimensional and lacking a certain something to really make the city immersive. Which leads to…

Prep Moving Fowards

Moving forwards I have two games that I’m planning, and I’m planning on preparing each game in different ways.

Warhammer 40,000My 40k campaign is designed to be an open world, investigative game. As a DM that means I have to have all of my information in one place. If the players decide they have a lead on one planet that leads to a completely different planet, then I need to be able to flip to that information. The idea is to condense all of the preparation I need to run the campaign into bullet point format, and run from a ringbound notebook. Each NPC will have a specific motivation, and their movements will be jotted in sections at the back so I can keep track of them. Rather than large block of descriptive text, I plan on filling the book with artwork that depicts the scene I want to portray, with notes on each of the five senses to add flavour (no pun intended).

A lot of my conceptual preparation for this campaign will be done in my journal, then moved across to the notebook fully formed.

The Monthly Brew Dog GameThe Brew Dog game is going to be made up of a series of one-shot games. As such, this game will be run entirely from my notebook. A single map, with each room named to give flavour, and a quick rundown of the mechanics of the encounter within will cover a double spread or two, allowing me to improvise as much as I want without having to worry too much about continuity.

Final Words

I hope any of this is helpful. I plan (when my PC decides to start working again) on making a video detailing how I prep adventures, which should make a lot of what’s written here make more sense. I’ll post that up here when it’s done.

If you’ve got any thoughts, fire me a comment or a message. I’d love to hear how you prepare your games, so please teach me your ways!

“Birthed in the belly of a demon, an ancient and terrible blade awakens. Across Alfheim heroes are drawn to the depths of Dur Moro, their Doom to seek amongst those ruins of old…”

1) The Pool of Lost Heroes, and the Tree of Death.

A dark pool fills most of the cavern. The water is stagnant, but shows no sign of the life associated with that state. Totally opaque, it reflects the scene like a mirror, giving no clue as to what lies beneath the surface. A tall willow tree rises from the centre of the water, it’s drooping branches terminating beneath the glassy surface. It’s leaves are grey, but show no sign of loss or decay. The stench of undeath is cloying…

As the party look into the pool, one of them makes eye contact with their reflection. The eyes begin to dim, becoming glassy. The flesh around the sockets shrinks and turns to grey. A dead face breaks the surface, staring idiotically into oblivion. Above, the willow begins to move, it’s branches rising from the deep. With them come the bodies of lost heroes, terrible unlife given them by powers beyond comprehension…

2) Hidden Depths and Terrible Sigils.

Darkness. Complete darkness is all the party can see in the depths. Like an axe wound dealt by a vengeful god, the crevasse goes on forever. A single, sturdy looking but ancient bridge crosses from one side to the other. Beyond that a huge sigil sits in the cavern floor. The angles are deeply wrong, and seem to shift and change, subtly, before the eyes. The whole circle is carved of red stone, the deep channels running downhill to the centre, each one of them stained a deeper red. The circle demands blood, drawn by the giver’s own hand, and it will have it’s red toll.

3) Tunnel of Cracks and Circle of Stones.

A narrow ledge leads to a broken corridor. The rocks hold tentatively, and any wrong move could cause a devastating cave in…

Beyond, a circle of stones ring the figure of a dwarf. He breathes not, but he lives. As his eyes open, he sees you. He knows you. He cannot let you leave. Doom and Ruin are his weapons, Fate wielded as a blade. The future is his gift, and his burden.

4) The Chamber of Red Fang.

You look on, unsure, as your friend and companion walks certainly towards the sigil. Standing at it’s apex, directly in front of the wall behind it, he lifts his head. “Devour me, Lord; for your queen, She Who Seeks Ruin, I shall be your Fang, and you strong arm!” From nowhere a red, ethereal blade flashes into existence, as your friend raises his arm. As you cry out in anguish, he drives the blade deep into his own neck, tearing it out with gurgle of horror and awe. He falls, his life blood leaking out and filling the channels of the sigil around him. As the life finally fades from his eyes, the wall before him shifts and dissolves to nothing.

A clear pool of water, deep enough to submerge the tallest Hillman sits in front of the entrance to this new cavern. Behind it, on a tall plinth, is an altar. A body, wrapped in a black cloak and holding a res-bladed greatsword lies in state atop it. As you enter, the body shifts, then turns and sits up. Rising, it descends the stairs, stopping at the pool. Your watch as the friend you just watched die removes the cloak, flinging it into the pool, and raises the greatsword in a patronising salute to you. The cloak begins to sink, the water around it turning a deep crimson.

As your friend stalks towards you, you see a shape rise from the pool, now filled entirely with blood. Soon, a tall, lithe figure stands before you in a black robe. No body is visible beneath the hood, except for a trail of blood dribbling sickly from where the creature’s maw would be. One decrepit, decaying hand holds a jet black obelisk that seems to absorb the light around it. A red aura links this thing and your friend. Together they attack, and desperate battle is joined.

This is the first post (if you ignore my first ever post) where I want to ramble about a concept that’s been on my mind. Don’t expect anything mindblowing, or anything fully formed, more a stream of conscious on a topic. I really hope it’s useful, and/or entertaining…

Time is an elusive concept in role playing games. For the players, time is incredibly subjective, and is impossible to keep track of. They dip in and out of character so often, and so fluidly, that time becomes meaningless. For the DM, time is one of those things that you tend to ignore until someone asks you about it. Keeping track of it is difficult at the least, and often almost completely impossible. That said, time can be an incredible resource in your campaign, one that the players must manage, and that the DM can use and abuse. Time in an RPG can relate to either in-game time, or table time, and each needs to be controlled in different ways.

In-Game Time

ICRPG deals with the issue of time by spending the whole game in a form of initiative. The game is essentially turn based, with each turn taking up moments, hours, or days. The DM can then control time by introducing timers and the like. My only issue with this is the breakdown of party discussion that I’ve seen happen when compared to much more open systems, such as traditional D&D. My problem, therefore, is how to combine these two concepts; structured time, with the team discussion and interaction of less structured systems…

This might seem incredibly obvious, but my current thought is to run a variation of initiative. First, allow the party a short period of time to discuss what they want to do. After that they each get two actions (move, make a check, etc). This ’round’ could cover anything from a few moments to weeks, depending on what the party are aiming to do. In reality the exact length of time doesn’t matter so much as the illusion that time is passing, and that wasting that time will have consequences of some sort.

To use an example, I’m about to start running a game based in the Warhammer 40,000 world. The party play an Inquisitorial group, investigating a planetary system. Behind the scenes the bad guys make their moves, fight one another, and work to attain their aims. Money is no resource, the team have regiments, battleships and the unrestrained authority of the Imperial Inquisition at their disposal. What they do not have is time. In general the campaign will run in large blocks of time. What do the party want to do over the course of a week. If they want to spend a week researching something, interrogating someone, or overseeing military operations, then a few rolls will be made, and that’ll be that. If it requires more detail, then we can delve into the details and run that period of time like a traditional D&D adventure.

I think that makes sense…I think.

Table Time

Round timers do a great job of creating tension. The players know they have limited in-game time to do something, and it sharpens their minds to the task. The opposite happens when you break out the egg timers and ask them to do something in three IRL minutes. Physical timers can be a great way to bring the tension that the characters would feel during the in-game timer to the players. This is the kind’ve timer I’m usually worried to break out, but that I’m often glad I did when I use them right. This, I feel, should be used at points where the players are beginning to feel comfortable, and in situations where the player’s characters would really begin to feel the pressure of time. Maybe the ship they’re on is crashing, or the room they’re in is filling with sand. Many of the same events that a random round/turn timer would deal with, the physical timer is a similar, but fundamentally different, way of adding tension.

Final Thoughts

Really hope that all makes sense. Like I said, I’m still formulating my own thoughts on this matter, and I would love to hear what you think about it. Comment down below with your ideas, what you’ve done in your campaigns, and how time has affected your characters. Until next time, cheers!

“You enter the dank cave entrance, damp dripping down the walls. The passageway seems to go on forever, extending away into the darkness, your steps echoing into oblivion. Finally, after what seems like hours, you see a dim light reflected against the tunnel wall. You reach the opening, and look out into the vast cavern…”

The Map

The Hall of the Tarrasque

The Hall of the Tarrasque

The hall consists of six areas, each designed to test the party in some way. I’ll give a brief description of each room, but for more details on how I ran the mechanics, check out my Patreon page; the full run down will be up there by the end of the week.

Area 1

Area one consists of a narrow ledge, overlooking a terrifying drop, and a large, but empty, room containing two levers. Each of these levers open one of the secret doors which block areas 3 and 4.

Area 2

Area 2 is simply a circular, stone room. When the levers in area 1 are pulled, however, two large stones ascend into the ceiling, revealing areas 3 and 4.

Area 3

Area 3’s major feature is a deep, wide pool, riddled with semi-sentient vines. Deep in the pool is a melon-sized sphere, which glows blue. If a party member enters the pool, the vines attack and hold the player beneath the water…

Area 4

Area 4 is the scene from Temple of Doom; an altar stands on a plinth, with a melon-sized yellow sphere sat on top of it. The altar is trapped, and releases a rolling boulder which will hit players in its way, finally blocking the exit from the room as it begins to fill with sand…

Area 5

Area 5 is the ‘bridge’. The bridge consists of two posts with a small dent in each, extends a few feet over the abyss, then ends. The abyss itself contains an antimagic field. The field is dissipated, and the bridge completed, when the two orbs from areas 3 and 4 are placed on the two posts.

Area 6

As the antimagic field dissipates, the monster hidden high in the cavern awakes. The party must flee to across the broken masonry and rubble of the procession, and make it down the stairs, into the dungeon proper, all while the Tarrasque brings parts of the ceiling down on them, eventually stepping into the cavern and seeking the party out…

Further Thoughts

This cavern acts well as the entrance to a larger dungeon, and is based entirely around skill challenges, and thinking outside the box. I increased the difficulty, not by increasing the DC of the challenges (this would render the map subject to luck, which can be frustrating), but by utilising timers to give a feeling of suspense, and to focus the players’ thinking. Encourage the players’ creativity, and reward it.

I hope this gives you some ideas for running this map, or similar encounters, yourself, and hit me up with how it went! Until then, cheers!

Sunday Night DM began life as somewhere for me to fire my thoughts on DMing, and to talk about Talomire. Since then it has expanded to cover system reviews, maps, adventures, and houserules. I’ve opened up a Patreon account, a YouTube channel, kicked off a podcast, joined Drunkens & Dragons for a couple of livestreams. And I have plans…oh, do I have plans…

The Blog That Was…

When I first started the blog, my main focus was writing about the things that interested me, or that I thought would be interesting to readers. My Instagram account was a flood of Dyson-inspired maps, pictures from my DMs Journal, and any other fun stuff I committed to digital image. The real aim was to chronicle the development of Talomire, my original campaign setting, and to host at least one game in that setting, to put out as a regular podcast.

The blog featured some good, if irregular, content, broaching a number of topics ranging from my first horror adventure to my first experience killing a player character. The podcast had some technical hiccups, with weird sound and difficulty discerning who was playing which character. The content, however, I was happy with. The adventure went in directions I never expected, and the players really seemed to own the world as their own, straight from character creation, then into the game itself. Talomire itself has appeared only sparingly in my blog (excluding the Preparing For Talomire posts), with none of the nation’s lore, or the players’ document I have lying around.

The Blog That Is…

The blog, as it stands at the moment, is a little directionless. I set up my Patreon account, but never really (in hind sight) put enough thought into it. My rewards are lacklustre, the pricing out of whack, and the general layout is underwhelming. Around the same time I recorded my first YouTube video, and streamed my first live ICRPG game. These did spectacularly well, netting me 42 subscribers, and over 12,000 minutes of watch time over around 900 views, all in around a month. I never, due to lack of time and tiredness, capitalised on that, though. I have another livestream to run, and another campaign diary, but have yet to have the time to do them. The blog has suffered as well, with blog coming in few and far between.

All of which leads us to the meat of this post…

The Blog That Is To Come…

Looking at my work over the last five months critically, I can begin to focus in on what I want to be doing, and what (in my opinion) my readers and viewers want to see.

The Blog. I’m hoping to have at least two blog posts out per week. These are likely to be about anything and everything, but will contain a new map twice monthly. The map will be tied in with my Patreon rewards, but I’ll talk more about that further down. The blog will be, for the most part, system agnostic, although I do plan on posting either 5e, ICRPG, or Low Fantasy Gaming specific content from time to time.

YouTube. I want to really begin to capitalise on my gains in YouTube. My initial thoughts (although I need to run this past my players) is to run two livestreams a week. The podcast game, set in Talomire, will run on Fridays, though this may change from time to time, depending on players availability. The second is going to be an Index Card RPG game, set in Warp Shell, continuing off the back of The Last Flight Of The Red Sword. No details, as yet, on the livestreams; they’ll come with time.

Videos, however, I hope to begin doing fortnightly. Depending on how well that goes I might increase that to once per week. They’ll range from campaign diary-style videos, when I run physical games with my occasional-ICRPG group, to group discussions on topics with other DMs I know.

Patreon. Patreon has been a constant source of inspiration to me ever since my first two Patrons decided I was worth paying money to. In future I want to use this far more. Firstly, all my posts on this blog will be published over on Patreon as well, to have everything in one place. In addition, I will be restructuring my reward tiers, as well as my goals, to better reflect what I want to be doing with the Sunday Night DM…brand seems a strong word, but let’s go with it. I’ll post more about that over on Patreon soon.

Collaborations. Collabs are something I’ve always shied away from, through my own worry and introversion. Having worked with great people I’ve met online (Dank DM and Hankerin Ferinale to mention just two of the awesome guys I’ve had the pleasure of working with), I want to expand that group, and collaborate with anybody I can convince to let me work with them. Again, no details on this, but I’ll make sure to let you all know when I organise something.

I hope all of this sounds as exciting to you as it does to me. Coming away to Italy has given me time to really think about what it is I’m doing here, and given me a real focus for the future. Thank you for bearing with me.